A film with two inaccurate titles, Saw 3D AKA Saw: The Final Chapter is no longer in 3D and has as much claim to finality as Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter or Resident Evil: The Final Chapter. But it did snuff out the already lifeless franchise for 7 years, so they missed a trick not calling it The Final Nail.

By 2010 even Saw was sick of Saw, resulting in a 7th instalment that apes several other horror franchises. At times it clearly resembles Final Destination (which had gone 3D the year before), with busty teenagers and a neo-Nazi (played by the late Chester Bennington from Linkin Park) among its victims. There’s also a Scream-esque storyline about a fraudster (Sean Patrick Flanery) flogging a book about his made-up experiences as a Jigsaw survivor, and leading a support group for fellow victims, à la A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors.

This makes the mad first 20 minutes the most fun the series has been since the original, if just to witness a franchise giving up in real time, throwing in all the ideas that were previously rejected for being too stupid – including bringing back Cary Elwes, the man who set the tone for all the self-mutilation and horrible acting we endured for another 6 years (where’s our support group?). The movie is most entertaining when it leans into comedy torture-porn, complete with Fulci-style eye-gouging and self-administered dentistry. At least it’s more fun than watching the series tie itself in knots trying to explain mysteries it hasn’t even bothered to set up.

Sadly Saw 3D pulls back from the brink of self-awareness and soon settles into more of the same atrocious dialogue, awful wigs, and plot twists that depend on characters being so willing to support the man who tortured them that it almost reads as political satire. And evidently filming in 3D was so expensive that they ran out of budget for the gore effects, so the dummies look even dumber than usual. Also the blood is pink to counteract the dimming effects of 3D glasses, but apparently they didn’t bother to correct it for the 2D version. Even the poster (which had previously been the most inventive aspect of the franchise) is a mess featuring a skyscraper-sized Sylvester Stallone for some reason.

In fact Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) is conspicuous by his near-total absence, having managed to get plenty of screen time in previous entries despite being fortunate enough to have died during Saw III. It is often suggested that the producers regret killing him off so early in the series, forcing them into increasingly convoluted narratives to keep their strongest asset in the frame. It’s a solid theory, but one that assumes the producers of the Saw series are capable of regret.